


Contend with the Living Blues

by ariadnes_string



Category: Warrior (2011)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Slash, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 06:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13094760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: Saints preserve him from Conlons, Frank thought, especially this one.





	Contend with the Living Blues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Devilc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilc/gifts).



> I was just thinking about this movie, which I love, when your pinch-hit came up--Happy Yuletide and thanks for the chance to write in this fandom!
> 
> Title from the Sylvan Esso song, "Die Young."

Saints preserve him from Conlons, Frank thought, especially this one.

But there Tommy was, like a dark star in the middle of Frank’s bright gym, courtesy of the deal Brendan’s earnest blue eyes and national good will had made to keep him out of jail—a combination of house arrest, community service, and good behavior. Which in Tommy’s case, meant daily training at a reputable gym. Which, for all Frank’s sins, was his.

Frank kept his distance. He loved Brendan, lord knows he did. Brendan was the essence of dogged goodness, lion-souled indeed. But this one. He was a black hole, a gravitational field of chaos dragging everything towards it, the good and the bad, nothing could resist the suck of annihilation. Even Frank’s gaze, even now drawn by the killing speed of Tommy’s punches, his intensity, even when he was just working with the bag.

That wasn’t quite right, though. A black hole was too static an image for Tommy’s pull on everything around him. A manifestation of Shiva, maybe, destroyer and transformer. A slap in the face to Frank’s training mantras: order, consistency, rhythm. Tommy had that weird power to bring out the destructive urge in others. A sharp, visceral memory of telling Brendan to pop Tommy's other shoulder rose in Frank's throat. 

He swallowed it down. He tried to look to unusual places for inspiration, sure, but Tommy Conlon and Hindu deities was a fanciful combination, even for him. He turned back towards his office, but not before he caught Tommy looking at him, a hint of derision in his hooded eyes, like he knew exactly what Frank was thinking about, and was laughing at him.

+++

Tommy trained at odd hours, which was fine with Frank. He had no idea if Tommy planned to continue fighting and he suspected Tommy didn’t either. He would’ve offered to help—help him train or find fights—but Tommy hadn’t asked, and Frank wasn’t about to offer. He was letting Tommy work out at his place as a favor to Brendan and the Federal government. He wasn’t obliged to actually talk to him.

Once he’d had to come in early for a delivery and found Tommy already working out. For Brendan’s sake, he’d gone over to him—the place was deserted—and offered an obligatory “looking good.” 

Tommy had lowered the barbell, lifted his face to Frank’s, only his full lips keeping any color under the fluorescents. “Hey, Coach,” he’d said, giving the word the just smallest hint of ridicule. “Early for you, ain’t it? What happened? Mrs. Coach throw you out?” 

It stung. For no good reason, either. Frank had been ripped six ways to Sunday by angry fighters, and it never bothered him at all. But this one, Brendan’s black sheep brother, could aim a word like a poison dart. Somehow Tommy seemed to know that the cold bed, the empty house, had driven Frank to the gym that morning as surely as the delivery appointment. Did he know, too, that there would never be a Mrs. Coach?

Frank had read once that brothers tended to have equal intelligence, whether or not they performed equally well in school. Maybe that was case here, though one was a physics teacher and one an army deserter. Tommy wasn’t quiet because he didn’t know what to say, but because he knew that words, as much as blows, could hurt. Some explanation, anyway, for why he had Frank off balance like this.

“My gym,” Frank had said, reduced to stating the obvious. “Come and go when I like.”

“Yes sir,” Tommy had replied, suspiciously pleasant.

It really was better that Frank kept his distance.

+++

In the end, it was Tommy who bridged the gap.

He stuck his head around the door to Frank’s office one afternoon, diffident, but maybe not as stone-eyed as usual. “Ask you a question?”

“Sure.” Frank looked up from his paperwork.

“I need some new ink. You know someone good?”

Not the question Frank had been expecting, though who knew what to expect with Tommy. He looked him over more carefully, but Tommy seemed as serious as he ever was, feet apart, shoulders down. But why was he asking Frank this? Frank was proud of his tattoos, sure, but it had been a while. Half the guys in the gym probably had more recent experience, not to mention Brendan, under his teacher clothes. 

“Why don’t you ask your brother?”

“’Cause I’m asking you.” 

Interesting. So this was something Tommy didn’t think Brendan would approve of. But he didn’t seem shifty, or no shiftier than usual—almost, behind his flat tone, like he was letting Frank in on something. Well, it was their one small strip of common ground, not wanting to upset Brendan. Still, that was no reason to let Tommy off easy. “Okay. Yeah, sure, I got a guy.” He let that sit there a beat, until Tommy was the one off-balance for once.

“Cool. You wanna, you know, write it down for me, or something.” Tommy dug a crumpled scrap of paper out of his pocket, held it out.

“Nah.” Frank yielded to a mischievous impulse of his own. “I’ll take you. He doesn’t like to work without an introduction.” It was almost true. Pete liked to pick his clients—and he was enough outside the fight world that he might not recognize Tommy Conlon.

“Oh. Hey, you know—it’s okay. I’ll figure something out.” Tommy started inching his way back out the door.

But for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, Frank had his teeth in the situation now, and wasn’t going to let it drop. Maybe it was thought of the Hep C infested place Tommy would probably find on his own. And then explaining _that_ to Brendan. “No worries. I’m pretty much done here—let’s go now.” He fished his keys out of the desk drawer and shut it with a decisive click. “You ready?”

Tommy gave him a dirty look, but he wasn’t going to back down either. He followed Frank out of the office.

+++

They took Frank’s SUV, not the beater Tommy drove. Frank couldn’t stand the thing. It looked like something Tommy had inherited from his dad, and maybe it had sentimental value. But the thought of all the maintenance it surely needed made Frank a little crazy. He knew Brendan had shared some of the Sparta winnings with Tommy, so driving such a poor excuse for a vehicle was clearly a lifestyle choice on Tommy’s part, not necessity. Frank wondered if he could get a mechanic in to work on it secretly while Tommy trained.

There were fighters who were terrifying in the middle distance, but once you got close they shrank to normal size. Tommy Conlon was not like that. His bulk was as impressive in the passenger seat of Frank’s car as it was under the klieg lights of the cage, even though he was clearly trying to take up as little room as possible. He gave off a whiff of ozone, like grounded lightning. Frank felt his presence as a magnetic pull, daring him to come closer, to engage, to go to war. But they didn’t speak, except for Frank calling from the car to make sure Pete was free. 

“What’re you my mother now? Making my dentist’s appointments?” Tommy mumbled when the call ended.

“You need your teeth cleaned?” Frank asked. “I got a guy for that, too.”

Tommy snorted, but for once it didn’t sound malicious.

+++

“So what’s the damage?” Frank asked, when Tommy emerged from Pete’s upscale Fishtown studio. He expected some tribute to Sparta, or the Marines, a lachrymose memorial for his mom, or even his dad. Or more likely still, for Tommy to refuse to show him at all.

Thus, he was a little surprised when Tommy offered up the inside of his left wrist. There, entwined, were a small black ‘R’ and ‘E.’

“For Brendan’s girls,” Tommy said. “Rosie’s birthday is next month. It’s a surprise—that’s why I didn’t want to ask Brendan.”

It was weird, that’s what it was. Both extravagant and a little off-center. Still, maybe the gesture you’d expect from a guy who wanted to help his buddy’s widow with the rent money, so decided to win the biggest MMA tournament of the year. Frank couldn’t help but think that Rosie, and maybe her parents too, might prefer a stuffed animal or some glitter paint. But he couldn’t deny Tommy’s good intentions. Frank could see nothing but happy pride in his face at the way he’d figured out how to demonstrate the enormity of his devotion. It twisted Frank's heart in ways he hadn't been expecting.

All he could do was clap Tommy on his good shoulder and said, “They’re gonna love it. Come on, lemme buy you a beer.”

+++

At the bar, they carefully talked about nothing. Which meant, in their case, crazy shit they remembered from middle school wrestling; kids round as beach balls fighting string beans a foot taller, because that’s how the weight classes worked out; eighty-pounders going five rounds. Tommy was a surprisingly good storyteller, once he got going—the keen observation Frank had only glimpsed before standing him in good stead.

“You wrestle, too?” Tommy asked. “Or were you too busy being an altar boy?”

Frank grinned. “Hey, the Christian Brothers were top of the league—and they let you skip mass sometimes to practice.” But the memory wasn’t quite as toothless as he’d thought. He felt the grin slide off his face and his fingers clench around the edge of the table between them. “But then, you know, the Church and me, we had a falling out.”

Tommy had been peeling the label off his beer bottle, but he looked up at that, eyes sharp with understanding and shockingly clear compassion. He didn’t say anything, just nodded, like he understood it all. Something about his face made Frank believe the story Brendan had told him about Tommy nursing their mom through her last illness all alone. Frank was the first to drop his eyes. He was still looking at the scored and battered table when he felt the warmth and weight of Tommy’s hand covering his own.

+++

“What’s all this?” Brendan asked when he came into the gym a few days later. He had to raise his voice over the music.

Tommy was circling Frank, who was holding blockers for him to spar against. He didn’t stop, just shouted back, “Bach. You ain’t never heard the Goldberg Variations? The speed’s good for footwork.”

Brendan studied them, looking back and forth between them, clearly trying to figure out what had changed. Frank would’ve have winked at him, but he needed to focus on Tommy’s punches, coming as fast as Glen Gould’s notes.

Finally, Brendan gave up. “Goldberg fucking Variations,” he shouted as he walked away. “Will wonders ever cease?”

In front of Frank, Tommy smiled, feral and seductive as a cat, and drew his arm back for another blow.

**Author's Note:**

> I believe in this pairing as much as you do--sorry I couldn't get it to a higher rating!


End file.
